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Did you know? Why nanocarriers are the future stars of cancer treatment!
With the continuous advancement of cancer treatment technology, the emergence of nanocarriers has brought new hope to the medical community. Nanocarriers are nanomaterials that serve as transport modules for drugs and other substances, including micelles, polymers, carbon-based materials, and liposomes. The unique properties of these small carriers make them potentially useful in chemotherapy and will change the way we treat cancer.
Nanocarriers range in size from 1 to 1000 nanometers, but in nanomedicine, devices smaller than 200 nanometers are usually referred to.
Due to their tiny size, nanocarriers are able to deliver drugs to otherwise hard-to-reach areas of the body. This property makes nanocarriers extremely important in drug delivery, especially in chemotherapy, to help reduce toxic effects on healthy cells.
Characteristics and types of nanocarriers
There are various types of nanocarriers, including polymer conjugates, polymer nanoparticles, lipid-based carriers, multidendritic polymers, carbon nanotubes, and gold nanoparticles. These different types of nanomaterials enable both hydrophobic and hydrophilic drugs to be effectively delivered in the human body.
Nanocarriers can be made using emulsification techniques and then loaded with drugs, however these techniques often result in low drug loading and insufficient encapsulation efficiency, which affects their clinical application.
Targeted drug delivery
Another important feature of nanocarriers is their ability to achieve targeted delivery. With the help of nanocarriers, drugs can be precisely delivered to specific organs or cells, a process that is crucial to reducing the side effects of chemotherapy. Studies have found that nanocarriers can achieve targeted delivery through four general methods, including passive targeting, active targeting, pH specificity, and temperature specificity.
Passive targeting
Passive targeting refers to the ability of nanocarriers to automatically enter the tumor's vascular system and accumulate at the tumor site. This phenomenon is caused by the "enhanced permeability and retention effect", whereby nanocarriers can pass through the leaky blood vessels of tumors and are less likely to escape.
This process ensures that the drug can accumulate efficiently at the tumor site, thereby reducing accumulation in healthy cells and reducing side effects.
Active Targeting
Active targeting involves adding cell-specific ligands or antibodies to the surface of nanocarriers to enhance their adsorption capacity to specific cells. This complements passive targeting to make treatment more precise.
pH SpecificitySome nanocarriers release drugs within a specific pH range. Tumors typically have a more acidic environment, which allows nanocarriers to release drugs at the tumor site without affecting normal cells.
Temperature Specificity
Tumors are typically hotter than other parts of the body, and this temperature difference has been exploited to enhance targeted delivery of nanocarriers.
Application Prospects
Currently, most research on nanocarriers focuses on their potential for drug delivery, especially in the field of chemotherapy. As research deepens, it is found that nanocarriers can not only effectively deliver drugs, but also reduce the toxicity of chemotherapy drugs based on tumor characteristics.
About 75% of anticancer drugs are hydrophobic, and the emergence of nanocarriers provides new possibilities for the effective delivery of these drugs.
Faced with the growing number of cancer patients and the insurmountable defects of existing chemotherapy technologies, the research on nanocarriers becomes increasingly important. In the future, research on the safety and effectiveness of nanocarriers will continue, bringing greater possibilities for cancer treatment. So, how can we use these advanced technologies to improve the quality of life for cancer patients?
